Menu

Young Living & “Intent” to sell drugs

Young Living has been trying to reign in their zillions of consultants ever since the Petition to Protect the Future of Aromatherapy and the resulting FTC and FDA complaints by Aromatherapy United, resulted in Warning Letters to the company.

Some things they have done in the best interest of their finances, like label certain essential oils as “dietary supplements” in order to legally make structure and function claims. That serves no one but themselves, and eventually the FDA will catch up to the fact that most of the structure and function claims they make are unsubstantiated and that there is no reason to ingest essential oils on a daily or even regular basis. It may take a few more deaths, but I believe it will happen.

But other things are done well, and while also with the ultimate goal of protecting the company, has the positive side benefit of protecting consumers from misleading SNAKE OIL sales pitches and dangerous advice, which have led to so many adverse reactions over the past years. [example see the Injury Databases at Aromatherapy United].

Here are a couple examples from a publicly available Young Living presentation from last year.

Funny, some people just don’t get the message. So I took a couple screen shots off Facebook yesterday and I’ll be adding to the ongoing File of complaints with both the FTC and the FDA!

This particular consultant is making “pain relief” testimonial claims for topically applied YL essential oils, in spite of the fact that pain relief products are a category of over-the-counter drugs.

It does not matter if the essential oil is labeled and sold for topical use – making it a cosmetic;

it does not matter if the essential oils is labeled and sold as a “dietary supplement”:

pain relief is a DRUG CLAIM.

So unless that bottle is labeled according to FDA regulations for OTC Drugs – it is illegal to imply it will work to relieve pain.

It is dangerous enough that this company casually sells Wintergreen Essential Oil with no hazard warnings, but when their consultants continue to promote it as a drug – well – the company still has a long way to go before consumers are safe from their “consultants”!

So the next time a Young Living consultant tells you it is healthy to ingest essential oils – whether the bottle they are trying to sell you is labeled according to the FDA regulations for cosmetics, or labeled according to the FDA regulations for “dietary supplements”… you can tell them Young Living themselves says